This whole thing started with a question, one that was rattling around in my head for a couple of weeks: “That’s GOT to be bullshit, right?”. That single question, unrelated except peripherally to what this project has become, was the spark that started it all. And my particular flavor of ADHD, my neurospiciness, is an information sink that will not allow questions to go unanswered.
But, I digress…let’s step back a bit.
AI is all the rage right now, as everyone knows, even those who live under rocks. It’s unescapable. Ubiquitous. Pretty soon, some company, somewhere will announce they have created an AI that lives in your aglet (that plastic thing at the end of shoelaces) that will help you optimally tie your shoes for more precise usage of footwear. And it will be bullshit. A money making scheme meant to draw in investors. And it will make MONEY.
You see…this is the problem right now. Businesses everywhere are all trying to cash in to the AI craze, regardless of what AI actually does or even can do.
It’s a bubble.
The bubble will burst.
And we’ll all be sitting in the flotsam and jetsam of what is left, realizing that in the end, AI actually IS a useful tool. Something more akin to MS Excel or Photoshop or an impact hammer, and less akin to Skynet.
I’ll have to come back and write more about that in the future.
For now, back to my question about bullshit.
I work in the tech field, in the corporate business world, and no one is buzzier about the AI buzz than American corporations. “Finding ways to use AI to increase operational efficiencies” and other permutations of that phrase have been on the quarterly goals and projections for every employee in every department at every corporation in every business vertical for a couple of years now. The folks at the top want it, because they see an increase in revenue, so they pass it on down the line, until it becomes a mantra for everyone else in the business.
Of course, that concept isn’t new. The “idea that will change the business world so we all have to devote our lives to it” isn’t new. Only the “idea” we’re focused on is.
So, of course, it’s a goal I have adopted as well.
I tell people that I “use words to push pixels”, which is just a silly way of saying I am a front-end programmer. So, I needed to learn AI. To learn what it can, and more importantly, cannot do to make me more efficient and a better worker. This is equally nothing new, because folks in my field are ALWAYS having to learn the new technologies when they are born. It’s how we stay relevant and useful. Its part of the job.
So folks like myself have to weigh their philosophical and moral feelings about AI against their physical and tangible need to do things like eat, pay bills and remain employable. It’s an ethical gray area…but we also need to be able to sleep at night.
In the end, this explains to YOU why I was so enmeshed in the idea of AI itself to begin with.
And why I had the bullshit question in my head.
The question of scams.
The actual bullshit question started at the convergence of two ideas that kept popping up in my news and social feeds, both related to “get rich quick” schemes involving AI.
The first was the idea of “faceless reels”.
Reels, as you know, is the shorthand word for those vertically oriented videos you see all over social media. The videos are short form usually under 3 minutes in length and found all over social media platforms such as Facebook and Instagram, they are called “shorts” on YouTube, and form the entire business model of platforms like TikTok.
“Faceless” reels are those where the creator never actually appears on camera. They tend to be for pure entertainment and enjoyment, and come in a range of genres, two of my own personal favorite faceless reel accounts being “soulxsigh”, which features beautiful poetry spoken against what appear to be AI watercolor paintings, and “storydj.tales” which can best be described as whimsically horrific nightmares that will haunt your soul.
The thing is, there are also thousands upon thousands of faceless reels that say that YOU could be making huge money from faceless reels. If only you knew how. If only you had the proper formula. If only you had the proper knowledge. Hook up AI One to AI Two and push it through AI Three and then auto-post the result with AI Four and then sit back and wait for all the money to flow in. Riches await!
I thought, “That’s GOT to be bullshit, right?”
The second thing that struck me was all the rumors of completely AI fabricated “models” on sites like OnlyFans and Fansly raking in huge profits for their creators. Now, aside from the occasional real story that appeared in publications like Wired this seemed to be a highly overblown urban myth to me. The cost of AI image creation had to kill off the potential profits. It could never be sustainable long-term.
I thought, “That’s GOT to be bullshit, right?”
So I fell down an information hole, like I always do when my brain won’t let a question go.
After digging, I realized I was right. Other than an occasional short-lived flash in the pan (like the MAGA OnlyFans girl mentioned above), the get rich off of faceless reels idea, was, in fact, a grift.
But, along the way, the idea of Sister Legends was born.
So Here’s What I Actually Built
Through this journey, I did realize that if a human did the lions share of the work, and simply used AI for what it is, “a tool of efficiency”, an account featuring faceless reels could be possible and enjoyable.
And it had to be enjoyable, because if we’re being honest, it’s probably never going to become PROFITABLE. Unless you’re selling a product. “soulxsigh”, mentioned above, has his/her own book of poetry for sale, and “storydj.tales” has a few books of his own you can buy as well. And, as a fan, I hope they are making a good living off of those. I really DO. But, I imagine they are enjoying the ride as well.
So I decided, both as a way to learn AI better, and as a fun exercise, I would create my own faceless reels account.
Knowing that this would probably never make a single penny, I knew I needed a subject that interested me. Something I would enjoy, something that would compel me to keep this labor of love going over the long haul. Something that already touched upon my own interests AND made good use of my ADHD information sink nature.
I love horror in both movies and books. I love history. I love learning about cultures I’ve never touched, never visited, never even thought much about before. And I have a passion for finding ways in which cultures share common bonds instead of focusing on our apparent differences.
“Sister Legends” (Instagram, TikTok, YouTube) was the result.
Originally I was going to do reels about cryptids and bogeymen, but realized that the genre was both heavily saturated, and quite boring in the end…plus it didn’t fit my overall profile. Then I thought, how about I pair an American legend or piece of folklore with a similar less known one from somewhere else in the world?
But this seemed too limiting, and honestly, too “Western Society”. Why center America at all? Don’t we already do that enough? I needed to drop that colonial mindset.
I finally settled on the idea of simply comparing folklore, ideas and fears across the world. In pairs. Each episode being loosely connected to it’s “sister” pairing in ideas, with the underlying theme being “No single culture invented fear”.
And that’s where I arrived at tagline of “Same fears. Different shores.”
As to how I create: I do the research on each legend or story, gathering knowledge from all over the internet. I then use AI to help me collate all that data into one working piece, removing duplicates, verifying what is agreed upon by different sources and what is possibly a cultural landmine…as I do not want to offend the cultures I’m writing about. I then write it all into a script myself, and rework it to fit the time lengths, reading it aloud to myself for timing: 3 minutes and under for Instagram, 3-4 minutes for TikTok, 8-10 minutes for YouTube.
I then feed my script into an AI that turns my words into an audio voiceover. Not that I dislike my own voice (insert quip about people telling me I sound like Obama), but I want the voice to be consistent, even and measured across all episodes. I want it to be seamless and continuous.
I then come up with ideas for visuals. Here is where my own ethical limits put up a barrier. I have HUGE issues with AI using the work of living artists to create images. I have friends and loved ones who make their living creating art, and I’m an artist myself. I hate that shit. So I decided early on to have all of my visuals LOOK like something from the public domain. LOOK like something that isn’t stealing food from some working artist’s mouth.
I settled early on with the idea that my images would all look like “illustrations from an 18th or 19th century natural history book”. I like the visual idea that Sister Legends is sharing “very old” or “secret” or “ancient” knowledge…even if I’m talking about something that happened in 1960. The only artists I mention by name in my prompts are Gustave Doré (whose been dead since 1883) and Albrecht Dürer (whose been dead since 1528). So I’m less likely to be stealing from anyone. Once I have my visual ideas in mind, I create them with AI using these restrictions.
Once all of the parts are created, I assemble them myself in Adobe Premiere, doing all of the editing and syncing and transitions by hand.
So, yes, I use AI as a tool in this process. I’m currently searching for comparable “local” AI, that runs on my own laptop to switch to instead of global AI, that runs on the web, to cut down on the very little environmental impact I am currently having….hey, I’m a leftist, I’ll always be one.
In the future, I’ll do full blogs about each episode, how they were built, how they were received, what my research found, etc. They will be extended companion pieces to the videos.
This will probably never make a single penny. I made peace with that about five minutes in. Some things are worth doing anyway. And at least I’m enjoying the work.
The AI bubble will burst, the hype will die down, and we’ll all figure out what AI actually is and isn’t. And when that happens, Sister Legends will still be here…sharing old fears, finding common ground, and telling stories that were never mine to begin with, but somehow feel exactly like something I was always supposed to tell.